Saturday would have been flyable but it didn't look great, so I decided to go for a hike in the high mountains near Allos. I haven't climbed the Tete de l'Estrop - just under 3000m - and winter will put a stop to such things shortly, so that seemed like a good target.
The start of the hike was disappointing. Construction for some new ski-lifts has left a high valley more like a building site than anything very natural. Ski resorts look cute when they are covered in snow but the development process is much less attractive (though the engineering is impressive).Once I cleared the construction area, I had a lot of rocky terrain to cross to get to the summit. It looked as though a 'straight-line' approach would work, but the terrain has a very pronounced 'grain' with lots of hidden cliffs. Route finding wasn't terribly easy. Much of the hike involved walking over rocks from chair size to truck size. Occasionally, a rock would move in a spooky fashion that got me thinking of the hiker that amputated his arm.
Clouds were moving in as I reached the summit and I didn't stay long. Much of the descent was in the clouds - a GPS makes navigation so much easier in these circumstances (I'd probably have turned round without one). The shepherds are slowly moving their now fattened herds back down from the mountains back to the plains. Most of the herds are back in the valleys and will be making their way along the roads for the next few weeks.
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